Bernhard Berenson

• Agram (Croatia).
  
  • Strossmayer Collection: Albertinelli, Fra Angelico, Bugiardini, Cosimo Rosselli.
• Aix-en-Provence.
  
  • Musée: Alunno di Domenico.
• Altenburg.
  
  • Lindenau Museum: Amico di Sandro, Fra Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco, Mainardi, Pesellino, Pier Francesco Fiorentino, Sellajo.
• Amsterdam.
  
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It is a temptation to hasten on from Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio to Botticelli and Leonardo, to men of genius as artists reappearing again after two generations, men who accomplished with scarcely an effort what their precursors had been toiling after.

Michelangelo had a sense for the materially significant as great as Giotto’s or Masaccio’s, but he possessed means of rendering, inherited from Donatello, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio and Leonardo,—means that had been undreamt of by Giotto or even by Masaccio. Add to this that he saw clearly what before him had been felt only dimly, that there was no other such instrument for conveying material significance as the human nude. This fact is as closely dependent on the general conditions of realising objects as tactile values are on the psychology of sight.

• Assisi.
  
  • S. Francesco, Lower Church, Over Tomb of Saint. Frescoes: Allegories of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, and Triumph of St. Francis. (The Francis between the two Angels in the “Obedience” and nearly all of the “Triumph” were executed by another hand, probably C.)
    
    • R. Transept.
      

Well, it was of the power to stimulate the tactile consciousness—of the essential, as I have ventured to call it, in the art of painting—that Giotto was supreme master. This is his everlasting claim to greatness, and it is this which will make him a source of highest æsthetic delight for a period at least as long as decipherable traces of his handiwork remain on mouldering panel or crumbling wall.

• Berlin.
  
  • Von Kaufmann Collection. Head of female Saint.
• Florence.
  
  • Bargello. 139. Angel playing Viol.
  • Or San Michele. Tabernacle. Finished 1359.